Magic Man and his friends

This is based on an idea in another person’s writing, an editorial. The Editor and Publisher of the Mecklenburg Sun, Tom McLaughlin, wrote an editorial on September 14, 2011 that I think is particularly timely still, even a year later.

The premise of the editorial is that there are consequences of Rep. Hurt’s actions, and in some cases, inactions. Tom discusses the eventualities of the promises Rep. Hurt and the rest of the Republicans in the House have made. What are the long term effects of what Hurt, Boehner, Cantor and the rest have proposed? Does any of it sound like it would work to preserve the way of life in America that now exists?

Some of what he writes is devastating:

In Robert Hurt’s world, with its dark narrative of a near-tyrannical government crushing the life force out of the American economy, certain things by definition must be true:

Levels of federal taxation would have to be so high that private investment and business profits would die in the crib. Alternately, government borrowing to cover budget deficits would have to be so excessive as to have the effect of crowding out borrowing by the private sector, which would feel an awful squeeze in the form of sky-high interest rates.

Washington would be issuing a flood of new regulations, strangling new hiring and leaving companies groping for air;

Business uncertainty, the ugly stepchild of excessive government intervention and taxation, would be thwarting the best efforts of job creators to get the economy moving again.

Doesn’t sound like the puppies and roses the Republicans would have us believe their plan is reported to consist of. Although to be fair, what is their plan anyway?

The truth is, it’s all a sham to drain the income from everyone currently below a certain income level, destroy the unions, destroy industries, and throw the country into a chaos the likes of which makes anything up to now look like a Sunday picnic. Of course, if you are already wealthy, the impact would be minimal. Imagine the cheap labor.

Robert Hurt certainly can take credit for part of that outcome. He is one who voted in lockstep (is there another way for Republicans?) for changes that would dangerously change this country for the worse.

And oh, I forgot to mention: Robert Hurt also voted in Congress to end Medicare as we know it by converting its guaranteed coverage into a subsidy program for seniors who in the near future would be forced to buy individual policies on the private insurance market. As an added bonus, the purchasing power of the subsidies would erode over time, saddling many retirees with medical bills they couldn’t hope to ever pay. All in the name of creating jobs!

Read it, know it. And when somebody says to you that Robert Hurt and the House Republicans have been good for the Fifth District and Virginia, tell them what you know about his and the ultra-conservative Republicans ideas for this country.

I started this blog in 2006 to talk about local politics, specifically Norfolk politics. It is impossible to talk about Norfolk in a vacuum, so you'll also find some regional, state, and national politics. And sometimes, no politics at all.

The inspiration for this blog comes from one of Virginia's most respected forefathers:

"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."

Thomas Jefferson, 1820

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